Hunnic language
The Hunnic language, or Hunnish, was the language spoken by Huns in the Hunnic Empire, a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic tribal confederation which invaded Eastern and Central Europe, and ruled most of Pannonian Eastern Europe, during the 4th and 5th centuries CE. A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire. A contemporary report by Priscus has that Hunnish was spoken alongside Gothic and the languages of other tribes subjugated by the Huns.
| Hunnic | |
|---|---|
| Region | From Eurasian steppe into Europe |
| Extinct | 7th century CE |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xhc |
xhc | |
| Glottolog | None |
As no inscriptions or whole sentences in the Hunnic language have been preserved, the attested corpus is very limited, consisting almost entirely of proper names in Greek and Latin sources.
There is no consensus on the classification of the Hunnish language, but due to the origin of these proper names it has been compared with Turkic, Mongolic, Iranian, and Yeniseian languages, and with various Indo-European languages. Other scholars consider the available evidence inconclusive and the Hunnish language therefore unclassifiable.